On GAME CHANGE

Here's Julianne Moore at the premiere of Game Change last night. I don't love how the black top is cutting her off.

Game Change airs on Saturday on HBO and HBO Canada. I screened it last week. You need to watch it. Not because it's the best movie. But because it's riveting. Jacek and I were transfixed. In the way that you get so into a movie you have to keep pausing it to yell at each other about it.

How does Game Change stand up as a film? It’s choppy. Certainly not the most evenly written piece of material. At one point you’re compelled to actually feel for Sarah Palin, by the next scene she’s a raging bitch. There are times when the script is way too abrupt, and that may be for lack of time, since the source material is so dense, but it doesn’t take away from Julianne Moore’s performance. And what a difficult task that must have been - to have to become someone so freshly embedded in public memory, who has already been parodied so brilliantly by Tina Fey, and to have to consciously, while figuring out the real guts of the person, try to avoid comparison to the imitation that ended up being so pop cultured. Superficially I can tell you that she was helped by some really great wigs.

But it’s in the silent moments where Moore really, really takes hold of this role. When Palin withdraws and turns into herself as she becomes overwhelmed, when she clings to the comfortable as a form of retreat - these are honest and understandable reactions that make the difference between a caricature and a character study.

To say nothing of Woody Harrelson. He’s amazing. And the two of them sparring is thrilling to watch.

Oh and the actress playing Bristol Palin looks more like Bristol Palin than Bristol Palin.

Anyway, there’s no way Julianne Moore isn’t getting Emmy and Golden Globe nominated for this one. She’ll go head to head against Nicole Kidman as Gellhorn, unless I’ve missed a cut off date technicality.